In the field of cardiology, there is strong and significant interest in utilizing the ever-improving capabilities of computer-based digital signal processing to aid in assessing the condition of the human heart and the associated cardiovascular system. The present invention is aimed at that interest.
In this context, the invention offers a unique, and informationally powerful, methodology featuring a wavelet-transform and signal-pattern recognition approach which draws relevant cardio-condition information from heart-sound data that is correlated in various ways with synchronized, ECG, electrical-signal fiducials. Preferably, though not necessarily, the source heart-sound and ECG data are derived non-invasively from a human subject.
As one will learn on reading the below descriptive disclosure of this invention, the invention is characterized by a number of innovative facets. With respect to these facets, the invention is easily visualized and made understandable, and thus made readily practice-accessible to the so-motivated users, by the block-schematic illustrations provided in the two drawing-figure illustrations of the invention. Individual building blocks used in these figures to present the important architecture of the invention methodology may, per se, be entirely conventional in internal construction and operation, but their cooperative, interrelated overall assembly and interactive operation(s) is/are unique. The above-mentioned invention facets are defined by different sub-portions of this overall assembly.
Accordingly, the various advanced features and advantages of the invention will now become more fully apparent as the description of the invention which follows is read in conjunction with the associated drawings.